29. (1991) and Lovblad et al. Van de Castle RL. Also, correlation is high when theta waves in the thalamic reticular nucleus are matched to those occurring in the nucleus reticularis pontis oralis. The oscillation of the sleep depth as cycles, as is well known presently, is quite clear in this figure. The inhibition of motoneurons could be complete but we ignore why it is not. An official website of the United States government. Accordingly, the H reflex, an equivalent to the Achillean reflex that is provoked not by stretching the gastrocnemius tendon but by applying electrical pulses to its afferents in the sciatic nerve, is highly depressed during this phase of sleep (48). (57). Thermoregulation is impaired in desynchronized sleep (64) but it is unlikely that body temperature changes due to dreaming activity, inasmuch as variations of temperature are slow while dreaming is a fast pace phenomenon. Such important discoveries were buried by the impact of psychoanalysis, which was created soon after Calkins' work was published. Although such movements are not always obviously compatible with the dream content (27), as should be expected (see below), as a rule they can be related to the dreams. Absence of ponto-geniculo-occipital (PGO) spikes in rats. Narcolepsy. Hence, experiments with such animals are extremely valuable and thus will be emphasized in the present review. In cats, during movements related to dreams such hyperpolarization is reinforced by presynaptic inhibition of afferents to motoneurons. In fact, when the voltage of each theta wave in one site is compared with the voltage in another site it is possible to assess the degree of coincidence or phase shift between the two sites. Modifications of recurrent discharge of the alpha motoneurons during sleep. 122. A related point of view was put forward by Krueger & Obal (1993), who proposed that, on the basis of use-dependent synaptic stabilization, the neuronal assembly not activated during wakefulness will be activated during sleep, to prevent it from atrophy (117). With developments in understanding of the neurophysiology of REM sleep, new 62. Dement WC. Much experimental work is needed before a convincing function can be ascribed to the fascinating physiological phenomenon that is dreaming. We spend a lot of time sleeping. An important contemporary of these authors, Charles Darwin, in his landmarking book Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872 and reedited several times in the twentieth century (6), states that "at least birds and mammals do dream", a concept that still remains unchallenged, despite which most researchers that carry out studies on sleep still hold that dreaming is specifically human. Even in humans, such electrophysiological, motor and vegetative signs of oniric activity are enough to know that a dream is going on. In addition, zif-268 is up-regulated in several novelty or learning behavioral paradigms, including two-way active avoidance (104), brightness discrimination (105), and enriched environment exposure (106). He properly related such dreams to his concern with that important war. Such hypothesis is grounded on the following steps. Unfortunately, despite the opinion of great scientists of the past, most researchers that deal with sleep and dreaming, probably moved by philosophical, religious prejudice and a faulty reasoning, do not accept the idea that non-human animals do dream. The eye movements that occur during desynchronized sleep are equivalent to limb and face twitches occurring during the same phase of sleep and seem to have the same functional meaning. In humans it has been shown that not only EEG desynchronization but also increase in vegetative functions, such as heart rate and ventilation (27), accompany mental activity. 2011 Dec;20(4):998-1008. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.10.005. Maquet P, Pters J, Aerts J, Delfiore G, Degueldre C, Luxen A, Franck G. Nature. 126. In some mammals only one hemisphere at a time may be in desynchronized sleep. Physiol Behav 1970;5:402-7. Nikolaev E, Kaminska B, Tischmeyer W, Matthies E, Kaczmarek L. Induction of expression of genes encoding transcription factors in the rat brain elicited by behavioral training. Inasmuch as dreaming seems to occur in most birds and mammals, it is unlikely that it has no function in the animal organism. This neural activity is then interpreted by the brain as an internal activity. eCollection 2020. The atonia of myoclonia of active (REM) sleep. Dreams are still taken by a majority of the human kind as premonitory, ascribing them the function of telling us that something important will happen. (ed. Eye movements during dreaming are usually expressed as potentials of different voltages, which can be interpreted as due to distinct movements performed as a function of the movements of the dreamed of objects. Sigmund Freuds theory of dreams suggests that dreams represent unconscious desires, thoughts, wish fulfillment, and motivations. A theory that has many followers is the one that connects dreams, in particular, desynchronized sleep in general, with memory consolidation. Where do dreams come from? However, considering the high prevalence of dreams during this phase it should be more appropriately named oniric phase of sleep. Santos LM, Valle AC, Sameshima K, Silva MTP, Timo-Iaria C. A linear relationship between theta waves frequency and the speed of learning in rats. The other is that dreams are caused Several physiologists, psychologists and psychatrists have theorized about that but all the explanations seem to be devoid of a logical or an experimentally demonstrable reason. Movements of the eyes when the lids are closed. 40. The heart rate and breathing quickens, and blood pressure rises. Electrophysiologically, it has been shown that the same type of hippocampal cells that are activated during training in a radial maze are also endogenously reactivated during sleep, which accounts for memory consolidation and for a close correlation between dreams and events preceding sleep (87). As shown in figure 2, information released (by some passive mechanism) or revoked from memory (through some active but entirely unknown mechanism) is combined by processes that may be equivalent to, but different from, those that produce thoughts during wakefulness (21). Soja PJ, Lopez-Rodriguez F, Morales FR, Chase MH. The same holds true for animals that live in water, such as fishes, molusks, crustacea and other similar animals; it is impossible to invoke as a proof that they do sleep the shutting of their eyes, inasmuch as they do not have eyelids but it is obvious that they periodically do rest, immobile, what perhaps does explain why at night their predators attack them heavily and devour them. Brain activity during this time keeps us Around 1860, Kohlschtter, a young medical student in Germany, showed that the threshold to awake humans by auditory stimulation oscillates along the night (4,8). It may be more appropriate to explain the latter authors' results by reasoning that dreams are originated in memorized information and are, accordingly, closely related to events occurring before sleep. Reticulospinal and reticulobulbar tracts are involved in conveying to the motoneurons the impulses that cause oniric movements. Epub 2010 Nov 12. Such high values of r may mean that theta waves arrive in such areas almost synchronously, coming from some other sites in the central nervous system. REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness. The ancient Chinese scientific inquiry tried to understand dreaming but usually also considered them mistically. Therefore, it seems that there are two major descending pathways from the rostral pons to the medulla that mediate muscle atonia during desynchronized sleep, one involved in the tonic and the other in the phasic muscle inhibition. Roldan E, Weiss TT. This allows us to see the irrational as a normal event, while emotional processing and symbolic identities can be explored. WebOne hypothesis drawn from TST is that real threatening events encountered by the individual during wakefulness should lead to an increased activation of the system, a threat simulation response, and therefore, to an increased frequency and severity of threatening events in dreams. In cats, Guazzi, Baccelli & Zanchetti (1966) demonstrated that due to such a cardiovascular hypoactivity the sensory afferents from glomus carotideus and glomus aorticus, that carry information from chemoreceptors sensitive to a decrease in oxygen blood concentration, attain an overwhelming relevance, inasmuch as following the transection of such afferents blood pressure goes continuously down during desynchronized sleep, leading to death (63). Frequency clearly increases and becomes regular, as compared with the trend before oniric activity. 130. 88. Electroencephal Clin Neurophysiol 1990;76:388-99. Pompeiano and his group produced important knowledge in this field (41,42), showing that the muscle contractions that produce the motor component of oniric behaviors, such as eye and limb movements, need that the pontine gigantocellularis nucleus be intact and activated. Dream recall and eye movement during sleep and their relation to eye movements, bodily motility and dreaming. Foulkes D. Children's dreams. Eye movements in born-blinds are probably due to a quite different reason. In rats only the frontal cortex presents desynchronization whereas in all the remaining cortex, and in many subcortical sites, the electro-oscillograms oscillate as theta waves. Wallace CS, Withers GS, George VM, Clayton OF, Greenough WT. In blind people, whose auditory and somesthetic sensitivity is enhanced, auditory dreams predominate, as expected from their high auditory sensibility. Bethesda, MD 20894, Web Policies Psychosomat Med 1975;37:147-59. Its is noteworthy that Weed & Halam's data, published in 1896, are close to those reported by Rechtschaffen & Buchignani in 1992, which was calculated as the mean of the average of seven different studies published by other authors (40). Arch Ital Biol 1965;103:369-96. 65. Muscle atonia during desynchronized sleep is, as stated above, generated in the alpha-coeruleus nucleus and involves both direct and indirect pathways that inhibit the motoneurons. At the age between 7 and 9 years Foulkes' subjects produced much more consistent narrations of the dream content, as should be expected (24). Braun et al. There is experimental evidence that eye movements are generated near the nucleus of the abducent nerve but Pompeiano (1967) does not agree with this view (10,41). Electrical potentials recorded from the medial vestibular nuclei precede eye movements by 20 to 30 milliseconds, which points to these nuclei as the last synaptic stations in the pathway that produces eye movements during desynchronized sleep. 14. 47. The postynaptic inhibitory control of lumbar motoneurons during the atonia of active sleep: effect of strychnine on motoneuron properties. In fact, all the phases of wakefulness and sleep, including desynchronized sleep, occur in the cerebellar cortex. New findings on the neurological organization of dreaming: implications for psychoanalysis. ", "As to the oviparous creatures, it is obvious that they sleep but it is impossible to state that they dream. Those that are common to all behaviors (increase in heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow to the nervous system and muscles, ventilation, pupil diameter and palmar and plantar electrical conductance) and are intended to increase the supply of blood, oxygen, glucose etc. Foulkes D. A cognitive-psychological model of REM dream production. When they sleep, fishes keep quiet, with no apparent movements, and then they can be easily fished with a hand.". Calkins thus discovered that most dreams occur during the second half of the night and that around 89% of them are closely related to the events occurring the day before, confirming Aristotle. 92. Sleeping and Waking. In nocturnal macrosmatic animals, olfaction is the predominant sensory channel and their vibrissae are usually very long, to detect the presence of objects at relatively large distances. Elsevier Publishing Company Amsterdam, 1962. Doctoral thesis, Federal University of So Paulo, 1995. However, reflex penile erection is facilitated after spinal transection whereas mesencephalic transections significantly increase the latency to its reflex induction, without affecting the percentage of tests eliciting an erectile event. Theta waves, discovered by Jung and Kornmller in 1938 (72), were extensively studied by Green & Arduini (73), who proved they are related to arousal. Control of ventilation during sleep. Those that are specific to certain behaviors. In rats subjected to early desynchronized sleep deprivation, ejaculation was deeply reduced in adulthood (114,115), what is a profound impairment of a very important instinctive behavior. Stern W, Forbes WN, Morgane PJ. 110. Considering dreams as hallucinations, Hernndez-Pen (1966) theorized that they are possible because the system responsible for wakefulness is inactivated during sleep, releasing memory tracings which are brought to consciousness. 132. Braz J Med Biol Res 1990;23:617-20. 3. This theory is supported by the fact that the body has decreased metabolism by up to 10% during sleep. In cats desynchronized sleep appears also as tonic cortical desynchronization (figure 3) but in the hippocampus, septal area and amygdala theta waves predominate, as in rats and rabbits. Inasmuch as all this relevant knowledge is entirely ignored, we hope the present review may help in rescuing it (4). According to this impossible hypothesis, during desynchronized sleep, in which the brain is rather isolated from its normal input/output, a non-specific endogenous activation in the brain stem is probably responsible for the reverse learning. Mirmiran M. The function of fetal neonatal rapid eye movement sleep. Nucleus reticularis pontis oralis is thought to contain the generator of theta rhythm (78,79) and is known to send direct efferents to the hippocampus and the cerebellar cortex, where we found theta waves that correlate closely with those in the hippocampus (Valle, Kubo, Iwamoto & Timo-Iaria, in preparation for publication). Does early night REM dream content reliably reflect presleep state of mind? FOIA A dream is a conscious experience that occurs during sleep. During the medieval era in Spain, by then the very cultural center of Europe (probably of the entire world), and mainly in the 13th century, some Muslim Arabs and Jewish rabis, centered in Cordoba rediscovered the Greek literature, that had been concealed by early Christianism, and translated all that important work into Latin, Arabic and Hebraic. 136. Differentiating Oneiric Stupor in Agrypnia Excitata From Dreaming Disorders. Baldissera F, Cesa-Bianchi MG, Mancia M. Phasic events indicating presynaptic inhibition of primary afferents to the spinal cord during desynchronized sleep. Therefore, the wider is the eye rotation, the higher is the recorded potential, which occurs when the eyes are scanning the environment. 97. When a dream is a nightmare, both motor and vegetative events may be very intense. It should be recalled here that, comparing the dream content in humans with events of the previous day, Calkins found in 1876 that nearly 89% of the reported dreams were closely related to such events. In 1944 Obhlmeyer, Brilmayer & Uhlstrung (10) observed that in humans penile erection occurs during sleep at intervals of 85 minutes, which is the average duration of a sleep cycle. Fos-like immunoreactivity was also found in association with cholinergically induced REM sleep (107,108). The posterior areas affected in this syndrome are the visual areas V3, V3a and V4 (97). This may be related to the presence of pet animals in most families in the Western countries and consequently this "subject" probably becomes the main thought of children. Later, theta waves were also found in rats during both attentive wakefulness and desynchronized sleep (19,30,31,74-76). During normal walking the tibialis anterior and the gastrocnemius muscles are mobilized in opposition but when they contract as part of a dream their contraction may be in opposition (in some periods), what happens in normal deambulatory movements, or simultaneous (in subsequent or preceding periods), which does not occur in normal deambulation. Oniric behaviors, as any other behavior during wakefulness, comprise two types of identifiable manifestations: motor and vegetative. Depression of electrically induced reflexes (H- reflexes) in man during low voltage EEG sleep. Miyauchi et al. In: Pompeiano, O. Maquet et al. 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